Negligently made beer slushies while cold crashing.

So I've got a Caribou Slobber and Honey Saison that I wanted to cold crash to help clarify before bottling. I figured I would put it down in the wine fridge in the basement, but there aren't precise temperature settings on it (just 1-7). I put it on 5 before going to sleep, put the two fermenters in there, and woke up this morning to a 20-degree wine fridge with beer slushies in there. Actually, only the Caribou Slobber was a slushie... the extra 3% ABV probably helped me out a bit there with the saison.

So I immediately took 'em out and put 'em in the fridge upstairs which holds a pretty constant 35-36 degrees.

So will my beer slushies be alright or did I cold-denature the enzymes and harm my yeast in the process? Thoughts/advice?

 

Unless you froze the whole keg to a single ice cube, I bet there are still plenty of yeast in there to carbonate. I'm sure you killed some yeast cells, but it is generally the freeze/thaw/freeze cycle that does the damage. You could pull a small sample into a sanitized flask or growler, add some sugar and see what happens. If it ferments then you're golden. If not, add a few grams of yeast along with your priming sugar before bottling.

 

Hey look at the bright side, you now have some Eiseslobber

Be sure to report back on how it tastes!

 

In a slushy state, the yeast cells very likely survived. If it had gotten more frozen, the formation of ice crystals can kill off the cells.

If you are in doubt, the addition of about 1/5 of a packet of neutral dry ale yeast added at bottling provides plenty of cells for carbonation.

 

I'm going to add a little gelatin to help clarify both and then let them continue to cold crash in the fridge upstairs for another 48-72 hours before bottling. My saison looks more like a hefeweizen right now.

I may take your suggestion of adding a little neutral ale yeast before bottling (just in case). If these are 1-gallon batches... how much additional yeast should I add before bottling? What do you think... would 1/8th of a teaspoon do the job or is even that much excessive?

 

I don't use gelatin, but it's my understanding that the clearest, read a newspaper through it, beer still has plenty of yeast in suspension. I don't think that you NEED to add more yeast to get carbonation. If it would help your worry, then you're not going to hurt anything by adding a gram or two of yeast. You'll just have more sediment in the bottles. Think of it this way; no matter how much yeast is in the beer, they can only eat the sugar you give them. More yeast doesn't mean more carbonation, it's just a smaller slice of the priming sugar pie for each yeast cell.

 

In your case, a small pinch would suffice.